Developer Blog: The Underdark Campaign

strumslinger

Read up on the new Underdark Campaign, Boons and some new ways to earn AD: http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/neverwinter/news/detail/9603263

two30

Great blog, nicely detailed. Interesting tweaks to the campaign system.

Demon Slayer: gain a chance to slay lesser demons outright. This chance runs form 0-5% depending on the demon’s remaining hit points.

That's a bit opaque, but sounds interesting. Demonic Knowledge probably trumps it in almost every situation.

kolatmaster

Great read, and very well detailed... That is greatly appreciated!

zak3056

FWIW, I think the 5th tier boon is a bit.... lacking? I've heard a LOT of people say that they have no desire to bother with the PvP campaign, because the boons only do anything when flagged for PvP. An entire boon that is "blah blah against demons" seems like something that's just for completionists, especially if it requires "rare drops." I'm thinking about how "fun" it was to find those Haarl's and Breyer's in mod4/5 and grinding something that will only be useful to kill demons (who I presumably will not need to grind anymore once I finish the campaign) seems less than useful, especially for a capstone.

beckylunatic

This looks really good.

One tweak I'd suggest to the stronghold supply pack is to add the choice of a surplus equipment voucher. Surplus equipment is proving to be a pretty serious bottleneck for small guilds at the moment too. I'm trying to get a rank 2 market to be able to obtain guild equipment, and even jamming in every single piece of green trash that drops for me, still have tens of thousands of points to go. Regular blues are too rare and don't offer a significant return over greens even when you do get them (should be worth 100-200 points, not 20), and the choice between donating and salvaging purples for AD is quite agonizing. Same goes for the salvageable blues, really.

@graalx3

rayrdan

Awesome ! The fifth boon is pve only sadly

kvet

Seem pretty well done as far as a Campaign goes - I'm a bit disappointed though, since the community as a whole has been saying for over a year now that we don't actually enjoy the Campaign grind thing... I was sort of hoping Underdark would bring some new and inventive addition rather than just another campaign. I still have hopes that this "replayable" concept will be interesting enough to get me to give NW another try since it's something I've been wanting since the very start, but seeing the overall implementation of Underdark will be in the tired campaign style is a bit disheartening.

ironzerg79

I actually really enjoy the campaigns, and the layout of the new one has me excited. Of course, there's still a lot of other ogres in the room that need to be dealt with first.

stylepile

Not too shabby. I'm starting to get exited.

BUT... If it were 1 new skirmish and 1 new dungeon instead of 2 skirmishes I would be drooling.

zukn75

The campaign looks interesting, the boon names are ...uninspired, but that not really important, 2 skirmishes is good, no dungeons or adventure zone is disappointing. Good to see ways to earn AD being worked into the core of things.

aimeesellers

Nice to see two new skirmishes added... and another campaign. Thank you for this.

But you know what is coming next... right?

WHERE ARE OUR DUNGEONS!?

No... I am not letting that go.

plasticbat

If I read it correctly, the new way to earn AD is capped at about 10666 weekly (assuming you put everything for AD instead of boon). Another drop in the bucket.

urabask

blog said:

Astral Diamonds Conversion – This task is available after you have completed processing Faerzress. It will convert a quantity of Faerzress into 4000 rough astral diamonds.
It requires 600 Faerzress, 150 Demonic Ichor and 20 hours. It is repeatable.

So erm add a task like this to all the campaigns please.

Boons are kind of disappointing. I guess we'll all be converting Faezress (wow that is a terrible name) for AD anyways.

If it was like the other campaigns I'd probably just stop at the third.

zekethesinner

Ok, some nice news in this blog. I rly like that campain, but cant imagine to do it on more than 2 toons. But still most important questions r not answered, and we wont let go. Prices adjustments and old good dungs, what about them?

Hmmmmmm?

(Sin)cerely
Kain

instynctive

Why are people so obsessed about the old dungeons (and further, why can't people be bothered to use whole words?)?

An injection of fresh content, new dungeons, new storyline quests, new sidequests.. new new new new new.

Please? Something to break up the monotony?

plasticbat

blogs said:

Demonic Ichor is a viscous pitch made up of all that is left behind in the wake of a demon's demise. It may be exchanged at the Equipment Trader in Mantol-Derith for powerful Drowcraft Armor or other high quality goods. We have added a weekly cap of 400 to the amount of Demonic Ichor that can be earned. This is in place of only rewarding campaign currency for daily or weekly missions. The weekly cap allows us to give Demonic Ichor rewards for every piece of Underdark content that you run.

That converts to 10667 rAD max for a week (if one put everything for rAD).

kvet

plasticbat said:

blogs said:
...
That converts to 10667 rAD max for a week (if one put everything for rAD).

yeah, so add in the new "awesome" weekly 15K AD they're allowing, you.... still have the same problem that everything is massively expensive but you're limited to 168,000 AD per character per week at the absolute max provided you play every single day for several hours per day. I know there's a lot of nolifers out there, but most of us have actual jobs, and unless it's changed since I've stopped playing a month or so ago (har har)... well, I get paid to do tedious HAMSTER on a computer all day, not the other way around.

urabask

kvet said:

plasticbat said:

blogs said:
...
That converts to 10667 rAD max for a week (if one put everything for rAD).

yeah, so add in the new "awesome" weekly 15K AD they're allowing, you.... still have the same problem that everything is massively expensive but you're limited to 168,000 AD per character per week at the absolute max provided you play every single day for several hours per day. I know there's a lot of nolifers out there, but most of us have actual jobs, and unless it's changed since I've stopped playing a month or so ago (har har)... well, I get paid to do tedious HAMSTER on a computer all day, not the other way around.

Yeah I really don't understand how much time they think people should be playing the game for each day.

Gating all the new AD behind hours upon hours of grind per day is just going to burn people out. Then they use all these artificial caps on where you can earn AD just mean that you can't earn AD running the content you actually want to run. Which will make people burn out even faster.

If you grind all the fstuff/ichor I don't really see why you shouldn't be able to just directly convert it to AD. Even over a week that's only 12k AD.

reds351

kvet said:

plasticbat said:

blogs said:
...
That converts to 10667 rAD max for a week (if one put everything for rAD).

yeah, so add in the new "awesome" weekly 15K AD they're allowing, you.... still have the same problem that everything is massively expensive but you're limited to 168,000 AD per character per week at the absolute max provided you play every single day for several hours per day. I know there's a lot of nolifers out there, but most of us have actual jobs, and unless it's changed since I've stopped playing a month or so ago (har har)... well, I get paid to do tedious HAMSTER on a computer all day, not the other way around.

Man with 168k a week i might finally get enough cube of augmentations to get the ability's I want by next year

ghoulz66

instynctive said:

Why are people so obsessed about the old dungeons (and further, why can't people be bothered to use whole words?)?

An injection of fresh content, new dungeons, new storyline quests, new sidequests.. new new new new new.

Please? Something to break up the monotony?

New grinds, grind, grind, grind. We shouldn't have to beg to have our old content to be brought back in the first place that existed since the game began. We are TIRED of grinding the same 3 dungeons over and over, and no one likes grinding boring repeatable campaign quests.

Also, they didn't say new dungeons at all.

urabask

rofl. Wooo lets grind demogoron a bajillion times to get ichor which is capped at 400 a week.

Really?

edit:

OK that's not as bad as I thought.

ghoulz66

urabask said:

rofl. Wooo lets grind demogoron a bajillion times to get ichor which is capped at 400 a week.

Really?

Grind a demon lord till it goes out of style.

All the while Traven Blackdagger remains the greatest threat and challenge of endgame.

asterdahl

urabask said:

rofl. Wooo lets grind demogoron a bajillion times to get ichor which is capped at 400 a week.

There are actually two types of ichor, the "special currency" demonic ichor used in the campaign and to purchase armor, and twisted ichor which is found under "other currencies" is used to purchase twisted artifact weapons.

That quote from the weapon dealer refers to the later, twisted ichor, that's why it only comes from Epic Demogorgon, where artifact weapons can also rarely drop directly. You can ask a similar question of the armor dealer, who will tell you about demonic ichor. That being said, the dialog is confusing as it simply refers to "ichor," so we've gone ahead and updated that dialog to be more explicit. Thank you for your feedback.

urabask

ghoulz66 said:

urabask said:

rofl. Wooo lets grind demogoron a bajillion times to get ichor which is capped at 400 a week.

Really?

Grind a demon lord till it goes out of style.

All the while Traven Blackdagger remains the greatest threat and challenge of endgame.

Went around trying HEs in DR seems like it scales the amount of ichor based on the number of players. With 3 players it was like 10 ichor and seals of the elements. Dropping the blue versions of the new rings too.

xavior44

we need to get away from things that give us rough astral diamond and get into more things that get ASTRAL DIAMONDS which that way you dont have to increase our cap a day and we can still make more then a HAMSTER 24k a day

ankabird1

Hey guys and ladies;

I will make it simple here. One of the upcoming Underdark Blog said that reward of an dungeon (or encounter etc) will be based on time you have completed it.

Yesterday i was in preview with few ppl trying new dungeon. We saw that there is mechanics to kill boss/adds etc.

But we have to deal lots of damage to bring down bosses or so.

In which case many understand my point here. SW Fabled Ilibriun (or however its written) / CW Shadow Weaver Set (great buff but noone like it) /GF Knight Captain (ıf i remember right that gives %25-15 bonus damage to team)

If a team has this combo and with a perma Divine Protector paladin, then they will end this new dungeon fastest than anyone. In which case this comes up with an fairness among old/new players.

Response from a dev is requested.

If this set bonuses work in new dungeon balance of drop requested to be changed as RNG.

or

This bonuses will not be avaliable on new dungeon / Tiamat etc.

dufisto

dont need a pali for those sets to come into play.
and you might as well just bring gwfs if your worried about a dps race. they dont need a set bonus to pwn everything.

tvcity

ankabird1 said:

......

Yesterday i was in preview with few ppl trying new dungeon. .....

what new dungeon?

ankabird1

demoragon or whatever its name.

tvcity said:

ankabird1 said:

......

Yesterday i was in preview with few ppl trying new dungeon. .....

what new dungeon?

ankabird1

I agree many HDPS gwf outdmg anything but they need backup!
But put this things i mentioned to a gwf you are talking about. Result will be even faster.
You didnt get my point man
As example a SW with fabled hits Tiamat's head 1 time and dies with soulforge and hit again . The outcome is 2 times triggered Set Bonus Damage. %30 (or more) of tiamat head is killed in 10 seconds or so?.

Give anyone fabled set and Lets run with GWF and SW in tiamat

dufisto said:

dont need a pali for those sets to come into play.
and you might as well just bring gwfs if your worried about a dps race. they dont need a set bonus to pwn everything.

dufisto

ankabird1 said:

Give anyone fabled set and Lets run with GWF and SW in tiamat

the problem is you cant give anyone fabled anymore. the vendor to get it is gone.